"You stole from a dead woman's house," Elise said softly.
"I took what she asked me to protect," Daniel said. "If Greg had found that bag, he would have found the attorney's card. The cash. The letters. He would have known she was leaving. And he would have used that knowledge to rewrite her — to tell our parents she was unstable, unfaithful, cruel. He was already hinting at it the week she died. Stress, he said. Mood swings. As if the aneurysm were a personality flaw."
Elise's arms had loosened. She was leaning forward now, elbows on her knees. "So you took the bag to protect her story."
"Yes."
"And then you hid it from me for eight months."
"Yes."
"Why bring it here? Why this trip? Why under your clothes like contraband?"
Daniel looked toward the door, listening for Toby, then back to his wife. "Because inside the bag there is a letter with your name on it. And because there is something else I found when I finally opened it in October — something Natalie never told me either. I didn't know how to hand you a dead sister's secrets in our kitchen between school drop-off and laundry. I thought if we came here — to the mountains she loved, to a place with time — I could give you the letter and sit with you while you read it. I told Toby not to open the duffel because I packed the bag at the last minute and I wasn't ready yet. I thought I had until tomorrow night."